About the client
Keep Financial is a U.S.-based compensation innovation company reshaping how organizations attract, retain, and motivate talent. Their platform enables employers to offer upfront compensation that vests over time. It aligns rewards with performance, improves retention, and delivers measurable ROI. Backed by top-tier investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Launchpad Capital, Thomvest Ventures, Cambrian Ventures, and Worklife Ventures, Keep is rapidly emerging as a category leader in modern compensation design.
The company was co-founded by Rob Frohwein, a well-known FinTech pioneer and the former CEO and co-founder of Kabbage, a landmark small-business lending platform acquired by American Express. His track record of building transformational financial products underpins Keep’s mission to modernize retention incentives and support the financial well-being of employees.
Business context
Keep was created to empower employee retention amid the unstable stock market situation. Due to the current decline in economic activity, becoming a shareholder may be an option for rewarding the most outstanding workers. Keep became an intermediary between companies and employees to strengthen joint commitment with bonuses instead of company shares.
Navigating regulatory & compliance requirements
Keep operates in a highly sensitive FinTech environment where vesting loans, KYC, bank connections, and document workflows must fully comply with financial, legal, and security regulations.
Delivering a complete MVP under a tight deadline
The team needed to move from concept to a functional product fast, including architecture, core logic, and third-party integrations.
Ensuring enterprise-grade security for financial data
The system handles sensitive personal information, ACH transfers, and loan workflows, requiring penetration testing and rigorous security controls.
Integrating multiple third-party financial and analytics services
Plaid, Synctera, DocuSign, Segment, and Mixpanel all needed secure, stable connections, each with its own constraints and compliance expectations.
Solutions we implemented
Business analysis
Business analysis is an inherent part of any development process. You can deliver a successful solution without precise requirements, collection, and analysis. It’s also vital to define the need and offer possible solutions that bring value to all stakeholders in context. Our specialists conducted market research and competitive analysis and presented the WBS (work breakdown structure). We tailored this project based on schemes that refer primarily to tech documentation.
Architecture and DevOps
As cloud-based software development provides stability and security, we tailor serverless platforms hosted by AWS. The architecture was built on modern cloud providers and their prebuilt services to speed up the development process and analyze external services. Additionally, we set up a range of services, including AWS, analytics, and monitoring solutions. This allowed us to realize how customers use our app and the results of our work. Logging all in-app actions simplifies debugging.
Development
We built this service from scratch, tailoring all functionality to the front and backend parts. Geniusee pays attention to the security of development, delivering solutions that comply with ISO requirements. We also deliver custom integrations with third-party services in a secure and protected environment. Here, we connected Plaid and Synctera for transactions and bank account uptie, DocuSign for contract signup, and Segment and Mixpanel for analytics.
Quality assurance
We conduct penetration tests, as it’s a vital requirement from regulators for FinTech projects. We use test cases, functional analysis, and regression testing as part of manual quality assurance. We automate the testing process by adding autotests for the endpoint, end-to-end tests, and unit tests to the functionality. Front and backend solutions will also be tested automatically soon.
Bonuses management
Customers can create and handle bonuses and add performance KPIs that make foreclosure faster.
Money transactions
Bonuses (loan) transfers and connection to bank accounts.
Admin module
We use 3d party integrations and APIs to manage the whole system without an admin UI
User verification
As loans require severe confirmations, we implemented the KYC (know your customer) model
3d party integrations
Connected the platform with Segment and Mixpanel for analytics, Plaid and Synctera for banking flows, DocuSign for document signing, and Testrail for test management.
MVP launched on schedule to accelerate market entry
The team delivered a fully functional MVP in 6 months, enabling Keep to move quickly in a competitive FinTech landscape and validate the product with real users.
Platform evolved into an enterprise-grade solution
Following the MVP, the product matured through continuous iterations, expanding functionality, strengthening infrastructure, and meeting enterprise-level compliance requirements
Early customer adoption from day one
The first customer onboarded immediately after launch, confirming demand for a more flexible, bonus-driven retention model.
Backed by recognized industry leaders
The solution received validation from Andreessen Horowitz, reinforcing product credibility and supporting Keep’s growth momentum.
